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Comment by sjsdaiuasgdia | Hacker News Reader

This administration is allergic to accountability, so this tracks.

this is a really odd thing to hear when the premise of DOGE is literally accountability. there is a lot of hyperbole and misinformation around DOGE, but at its root it's elon saying "if you spend millions of dollars you have to, at minimum, write a single sentence as to why"

obligatory trump and elon suck, im not defending them. just pushing back against misinformation

The premise of DOGE is accountability to the personal whims and judgments of Elon Musk ... when we talk about accountability in government we usually mean, accountability to the public

The messaging around doge involves some mention of accountability, alongside many other things like claims of fraud etc. That doesn’t mean that’s what doge actually does. You’re taking them at their word when their actions speak loudly.

what perspective do you have on their actions outside of what corporate media says, which is constantly attacking both of them? if we're going to say "let's look at the actions" then let's look at what they're actually doing instead of the hysterical narrative being spun around it by organizations who have a monetary and political reason to do so

Most of my awareness of doge comes from browsing the resources they’ve released or watching small commentators do the same. I don’t particularly like or trust corporate media as a rule. My top complaints would be

1 - a lack of transparency. They are very public about the small number of cuts that they can make look good to their base while obscuring/not elucidating a clear, extensive list of their actions. It’s not easy to examine the details of cut programs beyond short descriptions of dubious accuracy.

2 - clear political bias. The cuts/“fraud” they do publicize are frequently just things which appear, on their surface, to be ideologically liberal or left, rather than examples of clear waste or fraud. I say surface level appearance because the details of the cut are rarely more than a single sentence description and a monetary amount.

3 - security concerns. Doge isn’t careful enough/lacks the oversight to be handling Americans’ sensitive records. Their approach is very deliberately to behave more like a small startup, but they neglect security far too much as a consequence.

I think a department of government efficiency is a good idea, but I think doge pretends to be such a thing in order to cut government programs for ideological reasons without having to go through the legislature.

1. https://www.doge.gov/savings this seems like incredibly transparency for a brand new government initiative that's like 100 days old. and in the ways it doesn't provide enough info, it acknowledges that, and says they're working on it, which i believe.

2. i agree that there is a lot of highlighting of stuff that is cut that is aligned with leftist ideology, e.g. money spent on programs that are gender affirming or involving trans/LGBTQ issues. i am LGBTQ/trans myself and I am massively in support of all initiatives to make the world a more loving, kind, accepting place. but i can also empathize that government attempts to do so are probably rampant with fraud and abuse and theft and waste, and it's not clear to me to what extent our government should be funding things surrounding social issues like this at all.

3. again i think this is a sentiment based on hyperbolic media reporting and is hard to substantiate with concrete evidence other than "MSNBC had an anonymous source that said so". it's also hard to know how much the claims, if true, are misaligned with "business as usual" in the government. if doge has access to personal information to help reduce social security fraud, is that really unusual? it seems like it's necessary if you're going to audit fraud and catch things like a 9 year old getting veteran benefits or whatever.

i think doge is definitely framing cuts in ideological ways for political points. and i believe they are specifically looking for and cutting DEI related stuff, because they've plainly stated as much. but problematic framing and motivations aside, i do think it's a massive net benefit, and especially if their work helps weed out and cut off people who systemically commit fraud and waste for years and for millions/billions of dollars.

The entire purpose of DOGE is to attack the government while forcing them to use private services.

Don’t believe their lies because they’re just that lies.

Nothing they are doing is efficient because they don’t care. They just want to attack the government.

—-

For something HN relevant please look back at all the stupid comments Musk made after he was forced to acquire Twitter. Comments like there being hundreds of “ghost employees” or wanting devs to print their code changes.

There is already a government accountability office, www.gao.gov

> just pushing back against misinformation

People pointing out that the premise and actions of something are contradictory isn't misinformation. Rather, it's revealing misinformation - the premise.

We can't just believe everything anyone says, especially when their actions are so obvious in contradiction. It feels like I'm being gaslit.

I refuse to believe a person this credulous exists who is also not either a supporter or somehow "neutral" on Trump and Musk.

You're a troll.

you're using somewhat inflammatory language which i think is a bit further along the troll spectrum than me simply stating my perspective without attacking anyone. you could say the same thing without the attack.

you can look at my post history - i do routinely push back against things that i consider factually not true that are both trump and elon related, but i have also very frequently and loudly voiced my concerns and opinions about the ways they have hateful and problematic behaviors

my post history is also extremely, extremely left. i am very anti-capitalism and pro progressive causes, and i'm also trans. i have no desire to support the agendas of two people who don't respect me as a human being

i push on misinformation because i think there are real, meaningful things to attack these two people on. and i think the hyperbole of everything they do is literally what hitler would do distracts from the real issues.

i want to talk about ending wars, making sure everyone has basic access to housing and healthcare, that people can feel safe living their lives in ways that has literally no impact on anyone else. i want to end massive income and wealth inequality. and trump and elon are massively fucking those things up. i want to focus on that harm, and not the stuff people are making up

i also want to shed light on the problematic things that trump does that other presidents have also done. obama also had kids in cages. this isn't "whataboutism", it's an attempt to highlight that the problem isn't republicans versus democrats, though i recognize republicans are uniquely harmful. they both really, really suck, and cause millions of deaths a year. i want to highlight that voting blue isn't usually solving the biggest problems while acknowledging that it does solve some of them

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